USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Bridgewater > Celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, at West Bridgewater, June 3, 1856 > Part 2
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But something more even than this was wanted. These national traits of character required to be warmed into enthusiasm. It wanted that that spark of liberty, which, though but a spark, had been kept alive from the time of the old Saxon heptarchy, should be fanned into a flame, till every part of the body politic should be warmed and animated with a common and generous glow of sympathy.
The Reformation had done much to awaken this train of thought and feeling. But it remained for the Puritans of England to accomplish what the Reformation had begun.
To their eye, earthly honors were as nothing to the crown of glory that awaited them beyond the grave; and the world's treasures were poor in the light of that inheritance which awaited the saints who should persevere to the end. They read, in their Bibles, of the common origin and common destiny of their race ; and they stood up erect before thrones and rulers, spurning alike the civil despot, and the tyranny of the hierarch that denied to them the pure and simple worship which their hearts craved and their con- sciences dictated.
Nor was this all that was needed to establish a community, without a charter to unite or royal bounty
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to foster it, - a colony planted in the desert, and left to pitiless storms and scorching suns, to thrive, if at all, by its own vital, seminal principle.
For such a community, there must be a singleness of purpose, a homogeneity of character and views and feelings, amongst its members, rarely, if ever, before attained by any considerable body of men. Without these, their union would be like the sands upon which it was to be planted, - scattered by the first gust of dissension, and swept away by the first storm that fell upon it.
The process by which this state of feeling was to be attained was, like all the great measures of Provi- dence, simple, and, in the end, clear and intelli- gible.
With England as it then was, the idea of bringing the minds of men in different parts of the kingdom into sufficient harmony to carry forward such an enterprise would have been little better than an idle dream. The historians of England have told us of the condition of that country at that time. They had no means of creating, or keeping alive, a public sen- timent. Books were scarce and costly, and read by comparatively few. Newspapers they had none; and even the intercourse by post was only along a few principal lines of communication, in its slow progress, and at infrequent periods. And York was scarcely nearer to London than we are; and Devonshire and Lincoln were, as communities, as much strangers to
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each other as Edinburgh is now to Paris or Os- tend.
Where, then, are we to look for such a community as should furnish the school in which to train the men and women who were to plant New Eng- land ?
Bear in mind, that to do this required them to go forth into the wilderness, to give up the comforts of civilized life, and that they are there to rear a Chris- tian commonwealth, without any guide or chart to direct them save the dictates of conscience and an enlightened common sense. And we may readily perceive that the place for training such men is not amongst the luxuries of the city, the busy haunts of trade or commerce; but away from these, among the rural homes of England, and removed, as far as might be, from the parasites of power.
And as we recall the history of the men, who, in fact, founded Plymouth, we find that it was in precisely such a region as this that God in his pro- vidence gathered that little church, under Robinson and Brewster, which was to form the nucleus of a mighty nation of freemen.
Upon the confines of Nottingham, York, and Lin- coln, amidst a population purely agricultural, within the Hundred of Basset-Lawe, lay the little village of Scrooby. So obscure has it been, and so little known to history, that its very name, till recently, had well- nigh been forgotten. Yet there, within that seques-
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tered village, did that little band of Separatists come together to worship God, and keep alive each other's faith and courage. Its name can scarcely be deci- phered on the map of England. The manor-house in which Brewster dwelt, and within which they met, has long since disappeared. The traveller, for two hundred years, has passed by the spot, unconscious that it possessed any thing of historical interest. Nor was it till a few years since, that the devoted zeal of an English antiquary for the memory of the Pil- grims traced up to this, its fountainhead, the little wellspring of the Plymouth colony.
But as we contemplate the spot, the men, the motive, and the result, we find that it needs no effort of the imagination, no conception of classic fable, to give dignity or interest to its story. It was there that the process of union and assimilation was begun; it was there that the men who were to form one homo- geneous body, in order to achieve success, were trained in the school of adversity. The tie that bound them was the sympathy of a common nature, animated by a common hope, involved in a common destiny, and kept in harmonious action by the pressure of a com- mon danger.
But though the men had been found; though, amidst the dangers by which they were surrounded, a place of comparative safety had been provided for meeting and for counsel, - the time for action had not yet arrived. Some more searching test of courage
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and fidelity was yet to be applied. And the next step in the sequence of events was their act of self- banishment. They were at last forced to fly from the fire of persecution which was besetting them on every side, and, in sorrow and desolation, sought a refuge, from the ruthless ferocity of their own coun- trymen, upon the friendly shores of Protestant, pros- perous Holland.
This, it will be remembered, was in the year 1608.
Were we to stop here, and, ignorant of the fate of these fugitives from their homes, were we now to open the page of history for the first time, should we not expect to read how that little band, one after the other, were swallowed up in the populous sea into which they had thrown themselves ? Trade, com- merce, prosperous industry, worldly ease, and an untrammelled exercise of their own forms of wor- ship, were busy in quenching that fire of enthusiasm which nerved them to meet a hostile persecution.
Their children must grow up among strangers, and gradually lose their mother tongue, till, by every law of human calculation, long before even the first cen- tury had closed over that community of English Protestants and Separatists, they had been merged into respectable, prosperous, nationalized men of Holland.
But, if we open that volume of history at the end of eleven years, we find that they have indeed passed
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through this ordeal, - ten times more trying than the fines and stripes and prisons from which they had escaped in England; and they have come out un- scathed. They have been tried by the temptations and fascinations of the world; but they are the same little church, not of the lonely rural hamlet of Scrooby, but the worldly, populous city of Leyden. And Robin- son is there; and Winslow has joined them; and Bradford is working at his trade there; and Brewster is there to keep alive the spirit which had animated them when his roof was their only shelter. But they saw the dangers that surrounded them as we now see them, - the dangers of that very safety and prosperity which they had sought by flight; and they were ready to go forth again, into the only refuge which was left for them, - the wilderness of America.
There they may build their own altars, and worship in their own language; there may they rear their children, away from the world's delusive temptations, and hope, that, when they shall be gathered to their fathers, the faith for which they have suffered will still be kept pure in the sanctuary of a free church.
But, though thus trained by this long discipline, there was yet one more step in the process of prepa- ration to be taken, before their final exodus. In the language of a writer of that day, " the wheat had yet to be winnowed," that none but the sound and ripe and fitting grain should be employed to plant the vir- gin soil of New England.
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Let us bear in mind, that, though unconsciously to themselves, those who were to engage in that enter- prise were to constitute a Body Politic, as well as a Christian church, in the management of whose affairs qualities of a high and varied character were to be required. Mere piety, and a spirit of devotion, were not enough. They were to encounter danger; and they needed the heroism as well as the trained valor of the soldier. They were to frame and administer a form of government, till then new and untried; and they must have political sagacity, legislative wisdom, and executive talent. The forest was to be subdued, a hardy soil to be brought into cultivation, and the bays and shallows of the ocean to be sounded by the lines of the fisherman; and they must have rugged hands for toil, as well as wise heads for coun- sel. And, above all, they needed that which gave to their English homes their chief charm, to sustain their courage, and to cheer them in their labors, - the untiring devotion, the kind assiduities, and the hopeful fortitude of woman ; and, without these, they would have failed, as other colonies had done before them.
I pass over the sad parting at Delft Haven. I stop not to speak of the "Speedwell," abandoned, at last, as hopelessly unseaworthy. I follow the track of the lonely " Mayflower," freighted, as she is, with the destinies of this Western World. I look in upon her crowded cabin, as she goes pitching and laboring on
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in her solitary way across the stormy ocean ; and, at length, I listen to the voice of thanksgiving that goes up from the patient, tempest-tost, betrayed, yet hope- ful group that crowd her deck, as they look out for the first time upon the sands of Cape Cod, on the 11th of November, 1620. And, regarding them in the unerring light of history, let me ask, if, among that hundred souls, there be not the very elements that are requisite to accomplish the work they have undertaken ? Which of these are wanting ?
There is the pious Brewster, still true and faithful to his little flock; there is the brave old Carver, and there the wise and prudent Bradford, the accomplished and courteous Winslow, and the gallant, chivalrous Standish. And there, too, is the sobered matron, with a mother's cares; the young and hopeful wife, and the blushing maiden. And there are White and Allerton and Alden and Warren, and those other names that have become household words in these homes of the Pilgrims. They are all there; and, as you look over that roll, tell me, is not the work in which Providence has been engaged, through the changes and revolutions of more than a century, about to be consummated ? The tried men have been found at last ; the ties that bound them to Old England have been severed; and the ship that bore them from her shores has let go her anchor upon the soil of New England.
The value of that disciplinary training through
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which they had passed was tested before they had even set foot upon that soil. They found themselves beyond the limits of their charter, and, without a government, thrown homeless on a wintry coast, beyond the reach or the protection of any law.
But not a murmur is heard, not a thought of license or insubordination is cherished. Unknown to them. Providence had designed, through them, to demonstrate the capacity of man for self-govern- ment; and, in the very cabin of the " Mayflower," that solemn, memorable compact was entered into, which stands out upon the page of history as the first free civil compact of government that the world had ever witnessed.
Brief, however, as is that paper, and simple and earnest as is its language, how noble was its concep- tion ! - the germ of a free, democratic State, the first development of that grand idea of political equality which has spread out over this vast continent its busy, prosperous millions of freemen, and has been moving the nations of Europe as with an earthquake's power.
But, in attempting to do justice to history, let me not do injustice to the true grandeur of the Pilgrim character. No one pretends they came here to pro- claim an abstract theory of government, or to record their names upon a roll of parchment, in the fanciful hope of their being read by coming generations. They came here for other and different purposes ;
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and the adoption of the framework of civil govern- ment in the harbor of Cape Cod was but one of the series of acts and events which illustrate what I have so often repeated, - the perfection of that discipline to which they had been subjected. No emergency found them unprepared ; no vicissitude of fortune dis- comforted or disturbed them. It was the promptitude of the accomplished general, never surprised, never off his guard, and coolly meeting, amidst the very din of battle, the shifting and changing fortunes of the day. It was the practised eye and quick intelligence of the experienced helmsman in the storm, the calm self-possession and keen sagacity of the wise states- man when the affairs of state press most heavily upon him.
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But, in the case of the Pilgrims, instead of sub- mitting, as a body, to the guidance and control of some master-spirit, each felt a share of a common responsibility, and submitted his own will to that of the whole body ; so that, whatever measures they adopted, they were the result of the combined judg- ment and good sense of the whole number. And, in this way, they not only planted a free church in a free state, but developed the germ of that New-England - may I not say Yankee ? - character, which, in its vitalizing influence, was felt in every colony and town and household that grew up on its rugged soil, - that character, which, in the long struggle with the mother country in after-years, so often supplied the
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place of an organized government; providing in their destitution the sinews of war, and crowning the work at last with a free constitution.
But I am anticipating.
The adoption of this simple form of government was completed by the election of Carver as their governor; and, without misgiving or delay, they set about selecting a place for the seat of their little com- monwealth. And here, again, the hand of Providence was manifest, in having thrown them upon a part of the coast which a pestilence had nearly depopulated, leaving it literally vacant for the occupation of the new-comers.
After one month's exploration, urged on by the rapid approach of winter, - for snow had already begun to fall, - they discovered a spot which the historian informs us " they supposed fit for situation: at least, it was the best they could find; and the season and their present necessity made them glad to accept it." That spot has become the shrine to which the modern pilgrim turns his footstep; and "Forefathers' Day " is the holiest in New England's calendar.
Will it be said that I have dwelt too long upon the character of the men and women who braved the horrors of that first dreadful winter, and literally made that spot holy ground by the prayers with which it was consecrated, and the memory of the dead whose ashes were mingled with its till then unbroken soil ? There is nothing alien or far-fetched in the sketch, if
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we apply it to the character of the founders of Bridge- water. If none of the " first-comers " actually removed to this spot, three of them were among the original men of Duxbury to whom the township was granted. Three of the thirty-five who came in the "Fortune," the first vessel that arrived after the departure of the " Mayflower," are found among these proprietors ; and one who came in the third vessel, the " Anne," in 1623. So that the founders of Bridgewater were so far asso- ciated and identified with the " old-comers," or " fore- fathers " of the colony, that, in speaking of the charac- teristics of the one, we, in effect, are but doing justice to the other. Many of them, moreover, are supposed to have come over from Leyden within the first ten years of the colony ; and when, at last, they settled this fron- tier plantation, they did little more than transfer to a new locality the wisdom they had been taught in the rugged experience through which they had passed, the love of civil and spiritual liberty which had exiled them from their English homes, and the laws and infant institutions which had grown out of their con- dition as colonists.
We, therefore, cannot do justice to them or the occasion, without referring to some of the measures of government and police which the founders of the colony adopted for the promotion of its inte- rests. There is a spirit, pervading them all, which seems never to have been lost sight of; and that is the personal security, the equal protection, and the
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practical independence, of those who were admitted to the rights of freemen. Their rulers were elected by a popular vote. The whole body of freemen, for eighteen years, united in making their own laws, and, at last, only substituted delegates elected for the pur- pose because they had become too numerous to act collectively.
The laws they enacted, though we may smile at some of them, cannot now be read without pride and admiration. The true character of their early legis- lation and institutions will be better appreciated when the work of publication shall be accomplished in which such able hands are now employed, which is to place within the reach of every one a complete record of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies. But it would more than serve my purpose, if I could take that volume, known as the "Plymouth Laws," which was published by our Legislature in 1836, and present them, one by one, to your attention. I would ask you to remark their fitness for the condition under which the colonists found themselves, to what extent they borrowed some of the best provisions of law under which they had been bred, and with what wisdom and foresight they laid deep the foundations of a free State. It should be remembered, that the first satisfactory charter they had been able to obtain was in 1629. At that time, in the language of that charter, " by the special providence of God, and their extraordinary care and industry, they had increased
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their plantation to near three hundred people; and were, on occasions, able to relieve any planters, or others of his majesty's subjects, who might fall upon that coast."
During this period, the compact of the " May- flower " had been the basis of their popular form of government ; but they never seem to have forgot that which was due to the character and self-respect of freemen. The settlement of Plymouth, in the cant phrase of the present day, was an exercise of " squat- ter sovereignty " which needs no popular harangue or partisan press to dignify or defend. It was to create a new home for freedom; it was to plant on that soil institutions whose growth should root out and overtop every baleful parasite like Slavery, that weakens and wastes the stock upon which it fastens and feeds.
I open, then, that volume; and the first legislative act on which the eye rests is " that criminal facts, and all matters of trespasses and debts between man and man, shall be tried by twelve honest men, impa- nelled by authority, in form of a jury, upon their oaths." When we remember with what tenacity the people of England had always clung to this relic of Saxon liberty, through all the vicissitudes of tyranny and oppression through which they had passed, trial by jury cannot, indeed, be claimed as a new discovery in political science. But that it should be so early declared, and be made, as it were, one of the very
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foundation-stones of their political fabric, serves to show, that, next to their duty to God, the duty of guarding the rights of their fellow-men lay nearest their hearts.
Of some of their laws, indeed, the progress of the age has superseded the necessity. And when we recall the scramble there is for office, high or low, and how greatly the number of candidates exceed the places that are to be filled, we may be pardoned a smile when we read, " If, now or hereafter, any are elected to the office of governor, and will not stand to the election, nor hold nor execute the office for his year, that then he shall be amerced in twenty pounds fine."
Alas! how empty would be that treasury, in our day, that had no other source of supply than the fines that should be paid by those who "will not stand to the election," be the office what it may ! Unfortunately for the profit of the thing, our modern Carvers and Bradfords need no such stimulus to their patriotism as a penalty of twenty pounds for refusing to serve their country.
I might, if time permitted, ask you to look at the laws they enacted for the management of the economi- cal interests of the colony, - the maintenance of highways as a public charge, the establishment of public registries of deeds, and various other mea- sures, which have become so familiar from use that we forget the credit which is due to the wisdom that devised them.
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Were we to pursue our investigations, we might discover how early. that system of legislation began to be adopted, which seeks, by penal enactments, to extirpate bad personal habits, while the tastes and passions and propensities that generate these habits are in their full vigor.
Among these is one against the " great abuse of taking tobacco, in a very uncivil manner, openly in the town-streets, and as men pass upon the highways, and also in the fields, or as men are at work in the woods and fields, to the neglect of their labors, and the great reproach of this government." But I greatly fear that this " Maine Law" against a filthy habit soon fell dead upon the statute-book; and that the world will go on smoking, in defiance alike of royal counterblasts and Puritan legislation, of soiled carpets and domestic discomfort.
There is another class of laws standing upon the statute-book of Plymouth colony, which, in justice to the men of that day, ought not to be passed over in silence ; and that is the laws under which what are there called "Quaker Ranters or other notoriouse heritiques," including such men as Lyford and Old- ham, found so cold a reception, and so determined a resolution to exclude them from the colony.
That this should have been done by the very men who had dared every thing, and endured all things, for the free exercise of conscience, has been regarded as a most culpable and inexcusable inconsistency of
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conduct. But, in this, we are in danger of doing them gross injustice. That they had been born before the light of religious tolerance had been shed upon the nations, was their misfortune, it may be; and that they were born with human passions and weaknesses, as they were with human forms, may detract from their claims upon the respect of others. But wherein, after all, consists the ground of censure and reproach, that men, who had gone so far and suffered so much to find a place where they should be free from intru- sion and outside annoyance, should have felt disturbed and angry to be followed, and jostled in the very sanctuary of their own homes, by men who had done nothing to aid them, and felt no sympathy with them, in faith or taste, or desire for the advancement of the colony ?
It was to them like the intrusion of an unwelcome visitor into one's family circle, who comes to cavil and find fault, to call the master hard names, and plague and pester the inmates by rude deportment and bad manners. It is fashionable to call this intolerance and persecution ; and, much as we may lament the igno- rance and folly that sought by such means to keep out heresy and schism, we should, I apprehend, ascer- tain, if we pursued the inquiry, that there was much less of a spirit of persecution in these measures of government, than of a desire and determination to be let alone themselves.
But, pleasant as it would be to dwell upon the his-
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tory of the social and political condition of the colony, in which many connected with the early history of Bridgewater took a part, time compels me to forego the one, while I briefly call your attention to the other.
For twelve years after the settlement of Plymouth, the colony contained but a single town. Duxbury was formed into a church and town in 1632, and was followed by Scituate in 1636. Bridgewater formed the tenth, in order of time, of these little bodies politic into which the colony was divided.
I can scarcely refer to one circumstance, in the organization of the colonies of New England, which exerted so marked and lasting an influence upon their prosperity, their strength, and their ultimate success, as the subdivision of their territory into townships, and the creation of these into corporate bodies for municipal purposes.
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